THE body may be a little frail but the mind is still as sharp as a needle. Like many of us, she is proud to have seen in the new millennium, hopefully a new start for the human race, writes John Sheard.

But Belle Broughton is a tad prouder than most of us and she has every right to be so. The reason, you see, is that she has just entered her third century, having been born a couple of weeks before Christmas in 1897.

Queen Victoria was still on the throne, the British Empire was at its height, industrial England was the workshop of the world. But the gap between the rich and the poor was huge, the welfare state had yet to be invented, and Europe was soon to enter its bloodiest century in history.

Belle Broughton lived through all this and an easy life it was not. Her story reads like a Catherine Cookson book, the cobbler's daughter who went to work in the mill aged 13 and was still there, overseeing six looms, 47 years later.

It is a story of an England that has largely passed away, a story where the chapel loomed large in daily life and the day's work started at 6am, six days a week (although there was a half day off on Saturday).

It is the story of a lass who never married, I suspect, because at an age when most young girls would start what was then called "courting," there were very few lads about to court: they were all away in the trenches of World War One.

Not that Belle Broughton, Barnoldswick born and bred, has any regrets on that score. "No-one would have me," she says with a giggle. Then, more seriously, she adds: "The fact is I never met a fella worth leaving home for."

And that sums up her basic priorities in life: family ties, the Wesleyan Chapel, and work. Hard work.

"I was always looking for a way of earning an honest copper, even before I was old enough to go into the mill," she told me, eyes a-glitter with her memories, at the Peel Gardens Nursing in Colne, where she moved age 101 after living almost the entire century in the same cottage in Barlick.

"When I was nine or 10 I sometimes stood in for the telegram boy when he had a day off - there were very few telephones in those days, you know. One day the postmaster asked me to take a telegram to a farm over the fields about two miles out of town.

"He gave me thru'ppence to do it and the farmer gave me a tu'ppeny tip. Then, on the way back, someone asked me to post a letter and gave me a penny. I made a whole sixpence that day - now that's something worth remembering."

Perhaps I should explain to our younger readers that sixpence is now worth just over two pence and to earn it the little girl had walked almost five miles over rough moorland. But then, walking long distances was a part of everyday life.

"On a Saturday afternoon, we would walk either to Colne or Skipton where we would have a cup of tea and a slice of Yorkshire bread - bread with currants and raisins - in a little tea shop on the High Street.

"That was a very special treat, though. There were trains in those days, of course, and then came the buses. But we couldn't afford the fare, d'you see?"

It might have been different. Belle and her three sisters, born above the shoe shop in Albert Road, Bar'lick which is now the Midland Bank, all passed the three written sections of the scholarship exam which would have given them a place at the grammar school in Skipton.

Then all four failed the oral test. So all four of them went into the mill - "it's what young lasses did in those days. It was hard work, and long hours, but we were all the same.

"There was always something going on at the Wesleyan Chapel at the weekends. It's been pulled down now, of course, but it used to hold 800 people and I remember days when it was so full that people were standing outside in the porch."

The recollections keep dripping out like little gems, sparkling cameos of days long gone: "Another good day out was a walk along the canal with a picnic. We had to make our own entertainment, you see, cos there was very little money. There were no fitted carpets in those days. Most of us just had lino. You were considered lucky if you had a hearth rug."

One wonders how it would have been if Belle had passed that test and gone to the grammar school. She doesn't.

For one of the most remarkable things about this bright old lady is that she harbours no regrets, bears no grudges, against a system which deprived her of almost all the things which modern youngsters take for granted.

She lived through two world wars, the slump, and saw the industry that employed her from child to pensioner virtually disappear. She hopes that this century, this millennium, will be better for we youngsters. But she led a hard working Christian life and she's proud of it.

I asked her what she would wish us ordinary mortals entering only our second century: peace and prosperity? She misheard, thinking I was asking her to choose one or the other.

"Peace, no doubt about it," she declared emphatically. "We were always very busy in the mills during those terrible wars and there was more brass about than usual. But without peace, prosperity amounts to nothing."

Well, she might be slightly hard of hearing but those words rang with sincerity and good sense. Not a bad motto for a new millennium. Happy Third Century, Belle Broughton.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.